![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Doctor Who: 3x08 -- Human Nature
adventurer, daredevil, madman
John Smith has dreams. Smith is a man who, in his everyday life, seems quite normal. He's mostly normal, completely human.
But he has these dreams. Dreams with monsters and odd devices and a girl that's always walking away. In these dreams, he's nothing like the serious, staid teacher that he is -- instead, he's a traveler and sharply brilliant.
John Smith quite normal, definitely normal. Despite the odd fact that his personal past before the last two months is oddly spotty and he speaks of things that are impossible. He's definitely human, no matter how he dreams of having two hearts.
He's afraid of being taken for mad, because he sees these images and he writes down these words and they don't make any sense, so he calls them 'fiction'.
John Smith is a man of his time -- no coddling of children, no familiarity with household staff, horrible spelling, mind as full of weapons and war as any other man.
Children who don't perform well are beaten. Servants (particularly ones not the right color) aren't all that intelligent. Men are made for fighting and women don't quite understand. Man of his time, John Smith.
Odd how, in his dreams, he travels in a police box and feels like a fugitive. Odd how, in his dreams, he sees all sorts of mad and adventurous things.
Odd how, in his dreams, there's this girl. This immodestly-dressed girl, this girl that stays in his head, always walking away, who seems to disappear.
she keeps walking away
The title of the journal is 'A Journal of Impossible Things'. Things like changing your face. Like a ship that's bigger on the inside than the outside. Like gas-mask people and blue people and plastic people and people made of clockwork and a strange, significant pocketwatch.
Like a girl. A perfect girl, named Rose. How tragic and lovely, that this girl named Rose makes it into his journal of impossible things. Utterly out of reach.
beautiful monsters, always smiling
John Smith's dreams are not his own.
The Doctor bleeds through. At night, when John is asleep, the Doctor is still there. In the day, when someone is in trouble, the Doctor's there. Little bits of him bleed through, memories and hopes and madness.
Like falling in love with a woman who looks a bit like Rose, who makes him feel lost and giddy and alive the way that Rose did, but one older and wiser and widowed, as he is. Someone that he can talk to and share himself with and trust, as he did with Rose.
There's a whole lot to love in this episode that wasn't John Smith (Freema was quite good and Martha was in such a horrible position, all of the guest-acting was spot-on, and the whole vibe of the episode was incredibly perfect for the place and time it's set in), but he's what remains on my mind after. David Tennant does a perfect job here, absolutely perfect.
no subject
I loved her reaction to seeing his journal -- it was such a Rose reaction. "I'd be very interested." And she's so sweet and understanding of his fantastical dreams.